[stock_toaster]

I believe that the python2.6 json module (basically forked form simplejson) is much slower than the current simplejson version. The speedups (simplejson rewrite) didn't get included until 2.7 as I recall (memory is vague on this point).

[pjscott]

According to my un-reproducible benchmark, simplejson was 27x faster than built-in json. It's not a small difference.

[stock_toaster]

Yeah, I remembered it being significant, but wow. That is larger than I recalled it being. Probably due to a very unscientific test at the time. ;)